Alternative view

Globalisation has what it takes to destroy all but middle of the road. And, as wildlife becomes tamelife to be found only in zoos, imagination will shrivel to the shifting fads of fashion cheaply available on the high street. Increasingly the customs of the past appear eccentric and remote; disappearing with them are the minor chords of imagination.

 

Images from St Joseph's well near Miltown Malbay, Co. Clare.

 

 

 

 

Bird of Paradise

 

 

One of my abiding memories from a visit to the Skelligs, too many years ago now, is of gannets moving to and fro in the air between us and the islands. Of all the scenes I’ve ever witnessed, this was the most magical; it seemed we were approaching an enchanted place, a rock fallen from Paradise. Apart from the spectacular beauty of the spire-like Skellig Michael rearing heavenward out of the ocean, the gannets,  white scarves drifting on thermals, gleaming in sunlight, looked like mythical creatures freed from gilt cages to mesmerise any would be invaders.

To soar, shining, across the heavens is an image of divinity. To waft effortlessly is an attribute of a creature whose divinity is so ingrained that it is taken for granted.

I came across a gannet, its head disappearing into the sand, its wings broken like a wrecked ship, yet its beak still pristine like a perfectly forged dagger, and got a strong urge to write a poem about it. Not a very original idea: the pointlessness of vanity when all too soon our beautiful heads disappear into the soil.   

 

 

 

 

 

The Wake

1

When Katy Tyrell’s eyelids were closed,

they stopped the clock,

covered the mirror,

and she was waked. 

Entwined in her hands, a rosary beads,

‘Je suis L’imaculée conception’

was embroidered on her shroud;

everyone said she looked every inch a Cherokee.

2

 

After she was laid out, with the ticking stopped

and a sheet blocking the devil’s door, 

he said, “ Let’s sit down to a game.”

“Shuffle the cards, dale herself in.”  

“Lay’ve the window open

and mind, don’t step in her way”

Jane Clarke's collection 'The River'

I am delighted to hear that Jane Clarke's collection The River, published by Bloodaxe Books is now available and will be launched at four different locations around Ireland in the coming weeks.
Anne Enright will do the honours in Dublin, in Hodges Figgis on 24th June at 6.30 pm. Marie Heaney will launch the collection on the 26th June in Bridge Street Books, Wicklow; it will be launched on the 1st of August as part of the Boyle Arts Festival and in Charlie Byrne's Bookshop, Galway on Friday 14th August.
                     
                      You can learn more about Jane Clarke at her website: http://www.janeclarkepoetry.ie/ 

 

 

A tree is screaming,

the rocks have clapped hands over their ears;

a stream is stealing the silver

and a cave, aghast, has swallowed the moon.

 

 

 

Whipped Warrior

    

Those flowers with their nicotine fingers, 

blown curls and the past,    

are pointing over the ocean. 

 

See, their breath is short;  

they waved in their glory eye 

but shouted too loud.

 

The wind soiled your body;                 

 you were standing too high   

whipped warrior.              

Railway Child

 

 

Picking wood splinters

from my clothes, 

ear to the track

and the soft thunder

of a train hurrying

from Ballymurray. 

Day, a gift across

a stretch of line, 

was measured

in disappearing trains 

and struck on coinage

with the flattening of pennies.

The River Took Me

Once, in a sodden flaggered field

beside the river,

the current took me;

not a canoe but a trout,

a water’s flint smoothed by its flow,

a ripple’s almond.

 

All sleekness and fluidity,

all instinct;

a lidless eye running,

seeing and discarding,

gorged on movement,

passing all argument.

Caught, tangled in old years.

Caught, tangled in old years;
young man, 

the brambles have made you

delicately eccentric; 

your ears are closed

but to the berries, 

eyes fixed to where the winds

have bent them; 

like a hawthorn above the sea,

you seem to have frozen 

at the very moment

you were jumping clear.

 

 

Closing Windows

 

I carved a face onto a stone,

put in my pocket

and kept it for a charm.

 

After a while I grew uneasy

and put it

into a drawer in my bedroom.

 

One day I ran over the fields,

over the railway tracks to the stream

and threw it in.

 

I slept well that night,

but later, troubled by dreams,

I became obsessed with closing windows.

Old Houses in an Old Country

Emigration from Ireland in the middle of the 20th century led to a countryside that was dotted with farmsteads that had an eerie stillness to them. Warm Summer afternoons sagged with the silence. The lethargy that hung over the fields had more to do with the absence of children than  draining heat. The older people remained in stifled attitudes in darkened kitchens. Sun beams seemed to purposely miss them.

 

Is this an accurate memory? I'm afraid I cannot say.

 

 

A Stranger In The Townland.

 

 

In Autumn the farmhouse

with the sun-folded field beneath its chin,

traps the daylight in its spectacles,

then flashes it away.

 

A swing hangs among the orchard's arthritic trees

without stirring;

without remembering

a frantic liveliness now reduced

to the occasional commotion of a falling fruit.

 

Once songs of apples filled the farmhouse;

but the children became photographs,

the dust settled on their frames

and soon Autumns were flying uncontrollably by.

Today, between its curiosities, a bluebottle drones.

 

Now that the conversation with the hillside

is ended, the farmhouse

with the sycamore stole

has become an eccentric;

a stranger in the townland. 

Bone-white trees

 

I like these bone-white trees by Elaine Leigh. They suggest bodies,  rivers, limbs, less trees the longer I look. 

What the artist sees:

 

these trees, like the ladies of Avignon,

shamelessly flaunting themselves,

streaming earth to heaven,

arms thrown upward, presenting so fiercely.

 

In their assemblage, formidable, fearsome,

the usual meaning is altered,

(a shared purpose outside today’s understanding),

their collective nakedness guarding some primeval dogma.

Poetry Reading in Rathmines

This Saturday,  May 9th at 2pm in Rathmines Library, Hibernian Poets and guests.

The featured poets are Brian Kirk, John Saunders, Maurice  Devitt, Amanda Bell, Philip Cummins,

John Murphy and myself. It’s part of Canalaphonic Music and Cultural Festival so make it a day.

In a fog

As standing under the stars can make you feel tiny, but somehow colossal in belonging to  the universe as much as any star; standing lost in a fog can make you feel tiny in hopelessness and still this:

Fog

 

 

In the fog I was shouting

mute;

 

 

the pair of us on the mountainside

unpaired.

 

In the nowhere of everywhere,

suddenly I was everyone.

A death

Small questions hang  over us after the deaths of those close to us:

 

 

Mam’s death

 

Struggling for each breath,

(mouthfuls of air, for god’s sake!),

I said “Mam, stop working so hard”

 

Dying, and still forced to work.

“Take it easy,

 take it easy.”

 

Her hold on my hand slackened,

her eyes fell to the side,

she took it easy.

 

Did I speed her on her way?